Yet he must also show himself before his
self-invited guests,--Susy and her husband,--or their suspicions would
be aroused. He would try to sleep for a little while in the chair before
he went downstairs again. He closed his eyes oddly enough on a dim
dreamy recollection of Susy in the old days, in the little madrono
hollow where she had once given him a rendezvous. He forgot the maturer
and critical uneasiness with which he had then received her coquettish
and willful advances, which he now knew was the effect of the growing
dominance of Mrs. Peyton over him, and remembered only her bright,
youthful eyes, and the kisses he had pressed upon her soft fragrant
cheek. The faintness he had felt when waiting in the old rose garden,
a few hours ago, seemed to steal on him once more, and to lapse into a
pleasant drowsiness. He even seemed again to inhale the perfume of the
roses.
"Clarence!"
He started. He had been sleeping, but the voice sounded strangely real.
A light, girlish laugh followed. He sprang to his feet. It was Susy
standing beside him--and Susy even as she looked in the old days!
For with a flash of her old audacity, aided by her familiar knowledge of
the house and the bunch of household keys she had found, which dangled
from her girdle, as in the old fashion, she had disinterred one of her
old frocks from a closet, slipped it on, and unloosening her brown hair
had let it fall in rippling waves down her back.
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